Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Football Eats 3: Crawfish Nachos

There were a whole bunch of games on Saturday evening that I wanted to watch, but in the end it really came down to three things: UCLA-Nebraska, Angels-Tigers, and LA Monroe-Auburn, as the upset became more and more likely. Trying to juggle watching them on the same TV was difficult for a little bit, so I established a hierarchy: 1) any time Mike Trout was batting, 2) the UCLA game, 3) the Auburn game.

For such good games, I needed a good snack, and the idea of crawfish nachos crept into my head. Why, I do not know: I'm not sure I've ever had them before. Whatever.

At Fish Tales I picked up a package of crawfish tails. They are more commonly referred to as crayfish in the north, hence the packaging; crawfish is more of a southern term. (Though to be honest I prefer "mudbugs.")

I rinsed the crawfish off and let them dry.

I cut up some mozzarella cheese. Like most crustaceans, crawfish are complemented nicely by lemon. But I didn't feel like squeezing lemon juice over the nachos when they were done. Instead, I opted to zest a lemon and mix it in with the cheese.

I diced an Italian pepper as well.

I've seen pictures of crawfish nachos where the bugs are just dumped on top of a pile of chips and melted cheese. It doesn't look terribly appetizing, not to mention most of the bites of nachos that way will not actually contain any crawfish. I was not interested in that. Instead, I got some Tostitos Scoops. I place a cube or two of cheese in each chip, added the diced pepper, and placed a crawfish on top.

Yes, it was a little more time-consuming to assemble them this way, but who cares? I was sitting on the couch watching football, it's not like I was in a hurry.

I then baked them in the oven for less than ten minutes. (It was probably closer to seven.)

While they were baking, I mixed up a creole mustard sauce: Zatarain's creole mustard, red wine vinegar and olive oil.

Everything worked really well here. The lemony cheese was like butter against the crawfish, the peppers were sweet and the mustard sauce had plenty of bite. Originally, I'd considered using sausage in these nachos as well, but I'm glad I didn't: they were just fine as is.